I tried to write a novel once. I failed before I had even tried. Many of us feel that underlying beckoning to express our deeper meaning into a tome for all to revere, even if “all” is our mom. What makes writing a book difficult?

This question appears to be a heuristic, or substitute, of another question: What makes producing art difficult? In order for us starving artists to answer this, let’s deconstruct the language.

what makes producing art difficult?

Let’s assume, for the sake of this exercise, that there is a “what” we are looking for in the first place. That will force us to actually look for it, as opposed to losing progress to doubt (“Well, maybe it’s not there after all…”). This potentially false belief will get us to step two.

what makes producing art difficult?

Let’s assume, for the sake of this exercise, that this Schroedinger’s cat of a reason that might exist does more than exist: it does something. Specifically, this action involves creating or altering, among other things. “Making” itself as a verb infinitive bears ambiguity and does not carry substantial understanding on its own, as opposed to verbs such as “typing,” “swimming,” or “time-traveling.” The word “making” seems to show up in more idioms, so we will need more context to determine if our “what” “makes it,” or “makes up,” or “makes out,” etc.

what makes producing art difficult?

Such a vast, beauteous word this is. Typically, I think appreciation follows those with more interpretations. In art, pieces with mutually exclusive yet valid interpretations give a sense of godliness to the artist, as if s/he was able to connect foreign concepts together beforehand. Usually, such interpretations emerge after the piece is “produced” for public consumption, so the smart artist wouldn’t say “I saw a can of soup and painted it.” Rather, others would say: “This artist made such a raw, definitive commentary on the juxtaposition of material and social consciousness bringing forward the simplicity of object recognition symbolizing the industry of knowledge-peddling that henceforth empowers liberal utilization of anti-anti-establishment capitalist compartmentalization in a minimalist style.” Yes, yes of course that was my intent, the artist smirks.

Back to producing. Turning backward at our words in tow, we see that the reason we seek has created or altered the action of producing. Forward, we make out on the horizon a noun and an adjective. We are still treading water in a sea of uncertainty, but we have hope. It is possible that the following word is an the object being produced, rather than a way of directly describing the act of producing (“producing quickly”) or an interjection (“producing-HEY THAT’S MY CAR!”).

Note here that producing differs slightly from production, again open to interpretation. I think producing necessitates further explanation, while production more firmly stands alone. Consider the following duality:

A: “Production is down 50% from last quarter.”

vs.

B: “Producing is down 50% from last quarter.”

For sentence A, no further explanation of what is being produced is needed (unless the talkative intern wasn’t CCed on the memo). For sentence B, one is led to ask what is being produced, and validly so. “Production” and “producing” have formed into slightly different spheres of usage in the English language. And we have been given “producing.”

what makes producing art difficult?

Here, things get a bit more complicated. Experts, novices, and everyone in between could give you a different answer about the word “art.” More complexity emerges about reference, meaning, or usage of art. In this time of stunned unknowing, some of us look to history or etymology. Based on one thread of research, our linguistic ancestors couldn’t clearly classify “art” into one meaningful box.

Thus, decide for yourself what art refers to, means to you or the world, and how art is used. Here we see a possible explanation as to why I asked myself about producing a book rather than producing art; I can hold a book and simply understand it as a knowable object, but I can only hold an example of art in my hands, not art in itself. Try holding number 10 in your hands. No, those are your fingers.

what makes producing art difficult?

There is a reason that creates or alters the act of producing art (whatever that is), and as a corollary we are told that producing art is now difficult, due to a reason making it so.

what makes producing art difficult?

We can’t overlook the importance of punctuation here. We need to amend our purpose: “…”, due to a reason making it so, which may or may not exist but that we are assuming exists.

For whatever reason, we are trained to think that to produce means to create something new. However, if our goal in producing something is to create anew, we will be disappointed, because “there is no such thing as a new idea…We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations.” -Mark Twain.

Ignore the feeling that an idea isn’t original enough, because it will never be. When faced with writer’s block, whether staring at a blank page, a blank canvas, or blank screen, try a different approach. Consider something you know. This is your kernel. Now, deconstruct the kernel, instead of building upon it. It will break apart into several different pieces or concepts. In essence, restate the obvious but in more detail.

Power

The power of linguistic restatement lies in its ability to change faces. Creative geniuses are not creative. Creativity is a myth concocted to slap a label onto an unrepeatable pattern of thought in the mind of a someone with luck, resources, and energy.

So, when faced with any kind of problem try the following exercise:

Write the problem down or explain it to someone. Use words.

Deconstruct the language you use to describe the problem.

Restate the problem with deconstructed pieces.

Pay attention to every passing thought, even distractions. Even the smallest minutiae bear importance.

For example, I was struggling to create a blog post. So, I classified my problem into worlds, deconstructed, and documented. Now I have a blog post.

Awkwardness. Everyone acquaints themselves with it, as a passenger to a driver. There are many causes, but one overarching effect: discomfort.

One of the first times I used an Uber, I was a few drinks deep in Boston. As an antsy group of eight, we split into subsections, and I hopped into the front of the first Uber car. After a brief discussion regarding the best way to navigate narrow, one-way streets, a deafening silence settled into the car’s interior. After a moment, I casually turned to the driver and said: “So, what do you do?” The”ooo” reverberated over the drone of the engines for tooo long.

The driver dryly stated, “I am an Uber driver.”

“Right, right,” as I retracted into that half-smile, half-grimace that often emerges to encourage the effort but scold the performance. I had put on my glasses to find my glasses. I had put the cookies in the oven without turning it on. I had strolled into the office on Saturday morning while musing “what word rhymes with bird?” Any chance of interpersonal connection was as good as lost after a short string of sounds was formed aloud. The wall, that strange energy field that firmly forces its hand over my mouth, was raised. Why?

Symbol

Imagine that a conversation is a work of theater. In comparing my life to external symbols for increased understanding, I am quick to compare conversations to movies, novels, and plays.

Most conversations seem to revolve around a script of practiced questions and answers. There is no time for awkwardness or silence, for these break the magic. Like leaping from a diving board, soaring with limbs outreached, and smashing into sharp, chilling water, excitement withdraws into suppressed desperation. When I enter into a conversation, my inner dialogue turns its direction externally. The curtain raises, revealing and engaging attentions. We portion our lives into sections (four minutes until the bus, six-feet tall, a three-hour performance at the Folger Theatre). So, after the spell is broken, we think that the show has ended.

But there is no show. There was never a show. A meaningful conversation does not have a script, nor a time limit, nor a stage.

The questions “What do you do?”, and “Where are you from?” stand only as mere placeholders of our hopes, fears, and spontaneous thoughts. The past and present are usually boring.

“I’m a ___.”

“Oh, cool. My cousin is a ___.”

More valuable meaning lies in wait, hidden from immediate view. Ask yourself: would you rather be known by what you were, what you are, or what you could be?

Power

My answer: what I could be. The problem is, I know what I was (or, I think I do), and I know what I am (or, I think I do). So, these are important to acknowledge. But, I do not know what I could be. Don’t worry; that doesn’t matter, and I’ll explain why.

Establish a mission that’s your ace in the hole, your main squeeze, your talking point alpha. This is the thing that you think about when you’re not thinking. This is the thing that seems so obvious to you that you only realize you were moving towards after the fact. It’s the thing you can talk about best.

If you can’t think of something genuine, then make it up. Have fun with it. Even if you change your mind in a year, a week, or an hour, the importance of having a mission now is greater than the imagined integrity you’ll feel if you miraculously manage to stick to a plan without ever changing it. Acting as an unmoving rock clinging to a bank in a flood is foolish and inefficient. Adapt to survive, or fall by means of faulty belief in the law of induction and ignorance. Good luck when you wear shorts today because you’ve been comfortable the past three days…even if it’s snowing today. No, yeah, of course. You’re wearing them on purpose, to prove something. Right. Go freeze.

The point is, you’re never going to stick to this plan. So, go crazy making something up! I’m going to be a robot beauty stylist. I’m reading the Bible, backwards, to gain a deeper understanding of the influence of the direction of a narrative on my personal ethical system. I’m currently training for my next competition, in which we run three miles while typing a fan-fiction screenplay of a Star Wars blooper reel. Have fun with it! Just be sure to have it.

What this allows you to do is to be more than a name. We remember “Peter the Great,” more likely than “Peter.” The “name + differentiator” combination encourages others to define you, and give you a small sphere of unique power. The differentiator makes all the difference. No longer Grant, I am “Grant, the robot beauty stylist.” That increases my uniqueness factor from 1 / ~60,000 to 1 / (hopefully less than 60,000).

Of course, the goal should be to reach that uniqueness factor of 1 / 1 without the necessity of a differentiator. Although, if the CEO of the hottest new British company selling drink containers, catered to diabetics, that automatically assess the amount of sugar in the fluid and, after a hand grips it, takes a blood sugar reading and calls aloud whether the holder should or shouldn’t drink the drink is named “Kant,” then this person should absolutely defer the uniqueness to Immanuel in favor of the motto “Kant Kan”.

Barring any spectacular circumstances, focus on means to ends. The mission causes feelings of passion in conversation, which, if returned, resonate into more positive emotions. Good feelings bias us into thinking that the person we are talking to is better, that we are better, and that the whole conversation was better. Use this to your advantage by having more meaningful, future-oriented conversations.

And yet, I have not determined why I distrust patient people. The distrust is probably in myself. It’s probably because their patient eagerness fizzles away unsatisfied as I respond “Well, right now I am…” instead of “Oh boy, let me tell you about this new light-adaptive, auto-adhesive chrome eye-liner!”